Category: Science Fiction

 
Rexall Shaul stood quietly at the top of thirty flights of stairs. He held the door open for a moment, leaned over the railing, and peered down the stairwell’s center shaft. Music wafted up the from far below. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the sound.

So let me introduce to you
The one and only Billy Shears

He opened his eyes and softly sang along. “And Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, yeah.” He gazed down the center shaft again. “That’s an old one.”

The stairs descended from the art deco paneled hallway on AirCon’s corporate office floor to the garage underneath their building. There were many such buildings, some taller, some shorter, many shared, dotting Boston’s Incubation Square’s waterfront, and Shaul sometimes believed he could feel the waves scouring the building’s foundation piles buried deep into the landfill supporting the Incubation Square population.

He let go of the door and waited, quietly, meditatively, listening to the pneumatic cylinder ease the door shut behind him. The click of the latch served as his runner’s starting pistol.

His breathing slowed and he relaxed his still-lean body with techniques learned as a USAA level competitive gymnast.

Lift his arm to check his Omega Dark Side of the Moon watch?

Lifting his arm would raise his pulse a beat, maybe two.

The hesitation alone raised his pulse a beat or two and he wondered if he was losing his edge.

The sound of the pneumatic piston slowly increased as it reached the last moments of its transit.

Quick glance at the Omega. The door closed, the starting pistol sounded.

Off.

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Cisily Thorne lay naked on her stomach on a white and black checkerboard beach towel. The S/V Lady Eglesia‘s Volvo Penta IPS gently thrummed as the seventy-five foot power sail’s thrusters adjusted its position over its Boston Harbor anchorage. The low vibration transported Thorne back home; one or two elders clapping, others singing, and a didgeridoo throbbing in the background.

She missed being washed in the didgeridoo’s sound, of feeling the Old Ones take semi-human shape and walk towards the fire.

But that was thirty-five years and half a world away.

Today she let the sun warm her back and stretched out until her fingertips and toes touched the Lady Eglesia‘s teak foc’sle deck. Her left hand brushed past her mobile and she shoved it so hard it skidded to the fore-railing before banging to a stop.

She seldom took time off and when she did, it was understood – Nobody Bothers The Queen Bitch.

Cisily chuckled.

The Lady Eglesia served as her vacation while at work. A short dinghy ride from dock to boat and she could strip of her work clothes, close her eyes and be back home.

Her mind’s eye saw the brilliant magenta shield of Hamersley Range. She swam in pools of still, clear water, listening to the birdcalls of tiny white corella and pink galahs flying overhead. At night she would power out into deep water where the city lights grew dim. She’d shut down the Eglesia‘s running lights, lie on her back and watch the stars, so different from her northern Australia home, and remember the stories of the Panyjima, Yinhawangka, and Kurrama ancestors.

A passing launch tooted its horn. Thorne rolled sideways on the towel and waved, her movement revealing her milk chocolate breasts capped by their dark chocolate aureola. Boys lined the launch’s deck and applauded. She smiled, shook her head and lay back down. Both men and women still appreciated her late forties body. Long legged, full hipped, narrow waisted, and with just enough breast to keep a partner satisfied without getting in the way. Her skin glistened without needing oils or balms or ointments. A child of biracial birth, she grew up desired and hated, a dark skinned lubra in a white goddess’s body. People assumed she was the child of rape, their bigoted understandings incapable of recognizing her black father and white mother cherishing her and each other.

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Sean Davitty’s head still ached from Cousin Seamus’ all Irish wedding. He slept most of the flight back from Shannon, although Inis Mór to Shannon was a series of puddle jumpers and windups that hadn’t helped his hangover.

But Seamus was his favorite and he was Seamus’ Best Man and Dia could that man go on about his research and studies.

Archeo-linguistics. First Languages. Paleo-linguistics. Languages before there were languages. Going back before France’s Trois-Freres.

Sean smiled, nodded, and drank up another glass.

Besides, if he couldn’t dive in it, Sean wasn’t interested. Even while back home he twice brought his gear down to the harbor to practice. Seamus helmed his father’s boat out to deep water and Sean would go down down down, deep deep deep, and come up laughing at Seamus’ panic stricken face.

“It’s free diving, Seamus. I’m next in line for ONR’s DSEND testing and this puts me near the top.”

Seamus answered with a thick brougue. “I never thought my cousin would be working for the Yank’s Alphabet City.” But on Sean’s second dive, he drew some symbols on his tablet and told Sean to look for them when he was way deep. “Can you do that for me, Sean?”

“What do I get if I find them?”

“Ah, you’re too long among the Yanks, for sure you are.”

“Is this that Sheila Na Gig thing you use to do when we were kids?”

“Aye, them’s pretty stones we found as childrens were carvings of the Mother Goddess and we didn’t know. I’m still on the hunt, but now with the Uni backing me all the way.”

Sean was thrilled his cousin’s childhood fancies were financing his adulthood quest. And when he met his cousin’s bride-to-be, he smiled and nodded; his cousin’s found his Mother Goddess at last.

But Sean came up from the deep with nothing.

Now back in Boston and with a remedial throbbing head to remind him of his week in na hÁrainneacha, Sean practiced the techniques he spent a year learning from the Bajau. He didn’t have their genetic disposition, but he came close – his best dive was ten minutes at two-hundred feet. His teammates shook their heads at him. “You’ve already got all the certifications you need, Sean. You working at being a whale?”

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